The state of the art today for managing a supply chain generally requires substantial manual configuration. Typically, customers communicate with their established suppliers in a very personal manner. For example, a customer usually calls the regular supplier of a particular commodity or standard set of items and orders a desired quantity of goods. Some customers/retailers send SMS messages, facsimile transmissions or emails with the request. Each new order typically generates three or four different documents: An order, a delivery note, an invoice and a credit note.
Generally an order may be in the form of a non-editable notification, whether a paper note or a .PDF format file is sent from client to supplier. In some cases a client fills out web-form e.g. to online supplier, OR order is delivered verbally over the phone or sent via SMS.
A paper Delivery/Invoice notice typically arrives together with package either in the post or with the delivery service which is not a postal service. Some delivery services require electronic signature upon delivery. Direct/Online purchases result in immediate non-editable webpage which is confirmation of the sale. An Invoice is usually supplied in the mail together with the mail order (i.e. the purchases item) or with the delivery. With direct deliveries between a supplier and customer (possibly a retailer), the differences between the actual delivery and Delivery Note/Invoice are typically marked in writing over the Delivery Note/Invoice.
The seller (supplier) typically sends a credit note to the buyer (client) in response to returned goods, non-delivered goods, price differences or missing discounts, that where previously invoiced.
The potential for mistakes in the above processes and the subsequent paper trail that follows is great, as the respective documents are usually unorganized and are time and resource consuming to handle. In many cases, in order to better organize the data, these documents are usually inserted manually into the supplier/retailer systems (ERP, accounting systems, or Excel files), where each document is liable to exist in different versions with different data on the retailer and supplier side. Much time and many resources are invested monthly in order to settle such data inconsistencies between retailers and suppliers.
Various enterprise resource planning (ERP) and CRM systems exist to help organize and streamline the process and improve management of the supply chain, but these systems are generally expensive to setup and configure, and are owned and operated by one side of supply chain (either the supplier or the customer).